Midterm

The midterm will be held at the beginning of class on Thursday, October 25th. It's worth 15% of your overall grade, and will cover everything we've done in class so far:

• definitions of 'logic,' 'reasoning,' and 'argument'
• evaluating arguments (Chapter 6)
• types of arguments:
  -deductive (aim for certainty, are valid/invalid and sound/unsound) (Chapter 8)
  -inductive (generalizing from examples, are evaluated based how large and representative the examples in the premises are) (Chapter 7)
  -args by analogy (evaluated in terms of how similar the things compared are, and how relevant the similarities are to the conclusion being drawn) (Chapter 7)
  -args about cause/effect (correlation vs. causation) (Chapter 7)
  -abductive (inferences to the best explanation, evaluated in terms of coherence with background theories, simplicity, predictive power, falsifiability, etc.) (Chapter 12)
• the 10 or 11 fallacies covered in class so far (Chapter 5)

Get to studying!